Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One (18 page)

I spent all of that off-season in a motel room in Green Bay. It was cold and gray. I was still seething about my old Rams coach. I was trying as hard as I could with the Packers, but making the team was a long shot. Nothing was working out the way I’d wanted it to, and my wife and kids were far away.

So, again, as happened during stressful times, I acted out. I rented a video machine and adult movies to play in the motel room. There were times I got magazines from the liquor store. When I went in, the clerk would ask what number I was, because the only black people in Green Bay at the time were on the football team. I did all of this without a car, walking to the video and liquor stores after I was done with workouts. Sometimes I’d work out in the morning, play dominoes with my teammates at our motel, then work out again in the afternoon, out of boredom,
and then act out with pornography at night. In the strangest way, I felt like I deserved it. In particular, on Friday nights, after a long week of training and working out, the guys went out to bars and drank. Instead, I just found some porn and went back to my room. I treated it like my reward for a long week in Green Bay. This was the same pattern I’d had in college, and one I would have well into the years when I’d launched a successful entertainment career.

Partway into the season, a teacher invited some players to her classroom in Milwaukee to talk to the kids. Well, we pretended it was for the kids, but we really just wanted out of our motel. We went and, compared to Green Bay, Milwaukee felt like New York City. Before the other players and I left, the teacher pulled me aside.

“Anytime you want to come see the city, you know, whatever,” she said.

And then she sent me a picture of her, with myself and another player from the team. Rebecca was visiting, and she saw the picture.

“I don’t like her,” she said. “Something’s up with her.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” I said.

“I don’t like her.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

Yeah, wife always knows, that’s the deal.

Green Bay in the early spring is
not
a tourist destination. I was going stir-crazy. So I went to Milwaukee to see the teacher. She showed me around, and then she set up this whole picnic.

Uh.

I felt nervous, but I didn’t want to be back at our motel by myself, thinking about all the things in my life that were going wrong. We spent the entire day together, and when it was time
for me to go home, we started kissing in the car. I actually saw my wife in the backseat. I freaked out and yanked myself away.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “Oh, this is wrong.”

I got out of there as quickly as I could. I continued to feel a pull toward the teacher. But when she wanted to meet me again, I knew it was no good, and I wouldn’t agree. At the same time, I didn’t know what I was feeling. Rebecca and I had been married for almost five years, and we’d been arguing more and more in the past year. When Rebecca called to talk, I didn’t know what to say to her.

“Something’s wrong,” she said. “I feel something’s up with you.”

After much cajoling, I broke down and told her what had happened. Obviously, she flipped, and she planned to drive up to Green Bay. I didn’t want to hurt Rebecca, but I also couldn’t get clear on what I was feeling about the teacher. My selfishness knew no bounds. I found myself wondering if I’d gotten married too young. Maybe I hadn’t sown enough wild oats.
What is my thing for the teacher telling me?
I wondered.
If I truly loved Rebecca, why did I end up kissing this other woman? Is there something here? I don’t know
.

So I met with the teacher again. Even before anything more could happen, I realized there was nothing real between us. But try telling that to Rebecca. She was furious, and rightly so. As soon as she got to my motel, she started in on me.

“Did you go see her again?” she said.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Why are you seeing her? I can’t believe you.”

“I don’t know why. I don’t know what I want. I don’t even know if I want you. I think I’m going to get a divorce, and I think I’m just going to go to LA.”

Yes, I was a model for the most astounding immaturity. All I wanted was to fly to LA and sit by the beach. That’s how out of touch I was with my family and myself. Rebecca looked like I’d struck her. She started to cry.

“Terry, just don’t leave me,” she begged. “Just don’t leave.”

Instantly, it all became clear: Watching her cry reminded me of how far I’d fallen.
She’s asking me not to go, so I have to stay
, I thought.
I can’t do that to her and the kids. I just can’t. I’m a good guy
. Well, maybe I wasn’t acting like a good guy, but I knew I wanted to be one.

What finally shook me out of my crazy fantasy was that teacher, actually. I saw her visiting another player on my team.
Wow, okay, I almost gave up my whole life, and someone who really loves me, for this tramp
. That was a huge lesson for me. Now I’m sure everybody else could see it, but I’d been so naive up until then.

I felt so lucky that I’d woken up before I’d lost everything. I went to Rebecca.

“I’m a fool,” I said. “I saw that chick with somebody else. I think I idealized her, and I don’t even know why.”

Maybe because I viewed my father as “the bad man” in my household growing up, I looked at my mother as holy. Whatever she said was right. All women were good. But, of course, there are some conniving women out there, and some conniving men, too. And when you idealize the wrong people, it can ripple out into everything else.

Again, I felt very lucky I got the chance to realize I was just being a young dummy before it was too late.

So, going into the next season, I put everything I had into camp, and I mean everything. I really gave it my all. I did great, and the coaches liked me, and finally, I felt good. I had my whole
family up in Green Bay to watch the last game before the coaches decided which players they were going to cut. It had been such a long, dark time, and we were all ready to celebrate. After the game, I was on my way into the locker room when I heard my name spoken by “The Turk,” the guy who cut people.

Ugh, no, are you kidding me?
I thought.
I know I did really well
.

Not well enough, apparently. And I was so close, too. There are forty-five players on a team, but they can keep fifty-three. So when they’re putting together the season roster, they go down to forty-five, and then back up to fifty-three. Well, I didn’t make it through the final cut. I couldn’t believe it. Sterling Sharpe, who was one of the star wide receivers on the team at the time, saw me packing up my stuff.

“I can’t believe they cut you, brother,” he said. “You were doing your thing.”

I had given it my all, and it hadn’t been enough. I was devastated. We still had no money. And now I was cut again, and there was nothing to do but drive back to Flint. But I couldn’t bring myself to go home just yet. Rebecca and I had my parents drive Naomi and Azi down to Flint, while we stayed behind an extra day to recover and kind of get our bearings. The day before, we’d been picking out places to live. That’s how confident I’d been. And now it was all over.

As Rebecca and I drove back to Flint, it was the quietest ride. We were both contemplating all we’d been through, and all of the drama, even just in our own relationship. I didn’t know where my head was at, now that my NFL dream was over. I’d been in it for a little bit, but after what had happened with the Rams, and now this, it clearly wasn’t working out. I was unemployed. I was broke. I began to think maybe this was my punishment
from God for all the acting out with pornography, the teacher in Milwaukee, and every other dumb decision I’d made.
Do I go back to school? Do I get a job?
I was so exhausted, I couldn’t think anymore.

“Let’s just stop at a hotel, any hotel, and take a break,” Rebecca said. “If we get some sleep, it will feel a little bit better.”

Rebecca was always talking tremendous amounts of sense, but I never listened to her, except for in my rock-bottom moments. It was only when I was beat down that I could finally see the world as it was. Looking back, I don’t know how she stuck it out with me through all of this. I can only imagine she saw me as the ego-driven, immature narcissist that I was, and realized I was responding and reacting without thinking, and so she figured she had to think for both of us until I grew up a little. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she’d looked over at me sometimes and thought:
I can’t leave you. You need me. You’ll die without me because you’re an idiot
. She was right, and I’m so lucky I had her then, and I’m so lucky I have her now.

Of course, where did we end up stopping? The place I most hated and swore I’d never go back to: Kalamazoo. But there we were. We checked in to a motel, and I went right to bed. I couldn’t face reality anymore, and so I lay down and curled up in a ball. Rebecca sat next to me and put her hand on my back.

“I’m going to call your mother to find out how the kids are doing,” she said.

This was before cell phones, so we hadn’t talked to my parents since they’d left. As soon as Rebecca got on the phone with Trish, she handed it to me.

“Terry, I was praying for you to call,” Trish said. “The San Diego Chargers have been calling here. And the Green Bay Packers called. They’re trying to find out where you are, but they can’t get ahold of you.”

“What?” I said.

“Call your agent, now,” she said. “Everybody is trying to get ahold of you.”

As I hung up and dialed my agent, all I could think was:
Please, God, please
.

My agent had been trying to reach me all day, and I got him on the phone right away.

“The San Diego Chargers want you on a plane right now,” he said. “They want you on the team this week, like as soon as you can get there. Go to the nearest airport, take everything you have, and put it on a ticket to go to San Diego.”

Rebecca and I were jumping up and down on the bed.

It’s not over
, I thought.
It’s not over
.

Just like with my college scholarship—and the NFL draft—just when it had seemed like everything had ended for me, my NFL dream was still alive.

We made a plan. Rebecca would go back to Flint to get the kids and drive out to meet me in San Diego. On the way, she dropped me off at the airport. I got a ticket and flew from Flint to Chicago, where I had to change planes. I had just boarded my flight from Chicago to San Diego, when I heard a commotion in the front of the plane. I looked up and these two burly security guards were headed my way.

“Is that him?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

This can’t be happening
.

“You, you,” the one guy said. “Come with us.”

They pulled me off the plane in front of everybody.

I was terrified because the only thing I could think was that Rebecca had gotten in a car accident, or something horrible had happened.

No, God, please don’t. Not such great news followed by the worst
.

They had me standing on the Jetway.

“What’s the nature of your business?” one guy said, his voice hostile.

“I’m going to San Diego for business.”

They wouldn’t tell me anything. Finally, I’d had enough.

“Sir, I’m going there to sign a contract with the San Diego Chargers,” I said. “I just got cut from the Green Bay Packers. I’m a football player. That’s what I do.”

They looked at each other, and then they apologized and explained. At that time, anybody who was black and bought a ticket at a small-town airport with cash was dealing crack. So they’d thought I was a drug dealer. They looked embarrassed.

“Hey, can we get an autograph?” one guy asked.

Really? After that kind of nasty racial profiling, you want an autograph?
But this was no time to be Mr. Militant. I was just so glad that everyone in my family was safe. AND I was going to the Chargers. “Yeah, cool,” I said. “Just get me to San Diego.”

My grandmother always said I missed my money on that one, but I was too happy to sue anyone just then.

I arrived in San Diego. After Green Bay, where everything had been heavy—my mood, the weather, the food, the relationship issues, getting cut at the last minute—it was paradise. There was the sea and the sun, and it was incredible. They put me in a hotel where all of the players were staying. I WAS ON THE TEAM. My first day was team picture day, and I didn’t even know the other guys yet, but there I was, part of the team. I looked around and there was Junior Seau, and everyone else. They showed me to my locker, and at practice they threw me into play right away. I didn’t even know the system yet, but I didn’t care. I would learn it. After two seasons of being on the sidelines, I was more than ready to play and earn my way.

Meanwhile, Rebecca drove cross-country, by herself, with our two kids. I told her to go slowly and stop whenever she got tired, but she was determined. She was ready to get out of my parents’ house and start a new life, and after everything that had happened, she really wanted all of us to be together again. I did, too. Four and a half days later, she arrived at the hotel and came into my room with the kids.

“Hey, babe, what’s up?” I said. “How you doing?”

“Hey, honey, how are you?”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s get the bags,” I said. “Let’s go, I’ve got to get to practice.”

She fell onto the ground in a ball of tears and wept and wept.

“What’s wrong? What’s happening? This is a good time. We’re doing well.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I’m tired.”

I hadn’t realized the whirlwind of everything I’d put her through. All of the stress and the changes were just too much, and now that she’d made it to a safe place, she had to release everything she’d struggled so hard to keep inside.

“Babe, this is our new life,” I said.

We just looked at each other, and it was so good. I’d made so many empty promises to her out of my sense of entitlement. I’d gotten us into so many problems with money. I’d kept saying things were going to get better, but they’d only gotten worse. And now, finally, we were in San Diego. I was on the team. Sometimes the change of scenery allowed us to see each other in a new way, and that was one of those moments. We were both so relieved and happy to be there.